Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon on Sir Terry Pratchett

This is a great interview from Neil Gaiman on his friendship with Terry Pratchett and how they collaborated for Good Omens, filmed the day after Pratchett’s death. He shares some great stories and does a short reading.

One of my favourite bits happens around the twenty minute mark when Gaiman mentions Pratchett’s goal to make people understand that funny and serious are not opposites, that the opposite of funny is simply not funny. I think that’s something that really struck me when I was reading his books early on. It’s a common misconception that a story loses any insight into the human condition as soon as comedy or fantasy or science fiction are introduced, which shows not just a failure of imagination but a laziness as well. Anyone who has ever taken the time to read Pratchett (or many other authors who work in those genres) will understand that was precisely the focus of all his novels.